New Associate Professor in Business Administration

Markus Fellesson has been promoted to Associate Professor in Business Administration at Karlstad University. His areas of research are on customer-, marketing and organization practice within the service sector. In addition to his research at CTF and Samot, The Service and Market Oriented Transport Research Group at Karlstad University, he also teaches business administration at Karlstad Business School.

Most of his research is conducted within Samot. He is also a part of the Executive team and is the coordinator for Samot research theme 2; customer offering.
In a collaboration with Veolia transport he and a colleague have studied how ideas of customer service and customer driven service innovation can be implemented into the daily practice within public transportation. The project will continue with a study where the researchers will investigate opportunities for development, innovation and business entrepreneurship within public transport.
In another of Markus Fellessons project the focuse is on the role of the customer.
-Within service research we often assume that customer relations are harmonic and value creating. We also know that it isn’t unusual that customers behave unfriendly, abusive and sometimes threatening and violent. In a study within bus- and rail services we try to reach beyond the individual-psychological explanation models that have dominated in previous research in the area and instead examine how the underlying social beliefs about customers and customer orientation play a role, beliefs that not always are consistent with practical conditions of public transportation. We also examine the specific strategies and concrete actions that can be made to manage and at best encounter this type of problem customers, he says.
The idea that the customer role itself is worth to identify as a problem reappear in another project where Markus Fellesson together with a colleague at CTF, Service Research Center at Karlstad University, have studied how young people relate to economy, money and financial services.
-Here we have among other things identified a relatively large group of customers that either can’t or don’t want to act the way a financial actor is expected to. The project examines how various tools, for example brochures and functions at the banks internet services helps young people despite this to act as regular bank customers.
Markus Fellesson defended his thesis on customer orientation in public housing companies in 2001 at Gothenburg University.